A sight familiar to parents and students in Deltona for years: Timbercrest Elementary Principal Lonnie Tidmarsh ushering cars through the parent drop-off loop every morning, his dark beard down to his chest and increasingly flecked with gray.
But Tidmarsh made a promise to his students three years ago — if the school got an A grade from the Florida Department of Education, he’d shave off his iconic beard.
Until the release of the 2022-23 school grades, it had been six years since Timbercrest had an A grade, logging straight B’s for most years since 2016.
“I am so proud of you,” Tidmarsh told the students at a schoolwide celebration, as his barber, Cody Garrett of RustyRazor Barbershop in DeLand, waited in the wings.
Tidmarsh had been growing the beard for nine years, he said, but it took only seconds for his beloved whiskers to fall to the stage as hundreds of kids chanted “SHAVE THAT BEARD.”
The students, dressed in fake beards and holding various beard-shaving related signs, audibly gasped as Tidmarsh’s face was revealed. His three young children, most of whom were too young to remember a clean-shaven version of their father appeared slightly stunned.
“It’s definitely different,” his wife, Zandra Tidmarsh, who advocated for the change, said afterwards. “But we love you — beard or not.”
“Luckily he has a good chin,” Garrett said. “Not everybody does.”
Tidmarsh himself had another opinion.
“It’s very cold,” he said. “It’s terrible.”
